On the occasion of the Federal Delegate Conference of the German Green Party [Bündnis90/DieGrünen] on 15-17 November 2019 in Bielefeld, the motion V-01 on “Real patient protection: end the prejudice of homeopathy” was presented.

The motion V-01 contained three central claims: effects of homoeopathically potentized substances were said to be “not detectable”; “lack of efficacy of homeopathic treatment beyond the placebo effect was claimed to be “repeatedly demonstrated in very large and high-quality trials”; and there were alleged “health risks of delayed treatment” if homeopathic products are used instead of conventional drugs “to treat dangerous or chronic diseases”.

We published a scientific assessmentof this motion. The three claims did not stand up to scrutiny: in many experiments, homoeopathically potentised substances have shown reproducible effects on biological processes; in meta-analyses of clinical trials including most subsets of high-quality studies, homeopathic treatment has beneficial effects beyond placebo; and the available evidence from comparative studies a case reports does not support the notion of health risks from homeopathy.

Despite the declared commitment of the motion V-01 “to a health policy based on scientific knowledge”; the central claims of the motion were shown to be false and misleading, reflecting unverified popular opinions and ignoring the actual evidence base.

You can read the statement here.

Dr Harald J Hamre
Dr Helmut Kiene
Institute for Applied Epistemology and Medical Methodology at the Witten/Herdecke University